for people who care about the West

Follow-up

The 2003 wilderness settlement
between Interior Secretary Gale Norton and then-Utah Gov. Mike
Leavitt may be on the ropes (HCN, 4/28/03:
Wilderness takes a massive hit). The settlement eliminated
protection for 2.6 million acres of potential wilderness in Utah
and barred the BLM from proposing any new land for wilderness
designation without congressional approval. But in early August,
the federal district judge who originally approved the settlement
rescinded that approval. Judge Dee Benson expressed concern that
future presidential administrations could be legally bound by what
amounted to a Bush administration policy change. On Sept. 26,
Benson will hear arguments about the underlying legality of the
settlement..

New Mexico's Otero Mesa is back on
the oil-and-gas auction block. In July, the Harvey E.
Yates Co. leased 1,600 acres on the mesa for $2 per acre, the
minimum bid allowed under federal law (HCN, 3/7/05: Whose rules
rule on Otero Mesa?). The parcel is the first lease the BLM has
offered on Otero Mesa sinced 1997, and is part of an area that New
Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, D, had asked the agency to withdraw
from leasing. But Yates can't drill until the BLM resolves a
lawsuit from the state of New Mexico challenging the agency's
drilling plans for the mesa.

And in the fishy
science category — Last fall, 19 members of
Congress called for an investigation into charges that the NOAA
Fisheries Services doctored a "biological opinion." The revised
opinion concluded that the government's plan for pumping water from
the San Francisco Bay Delta to farms would not harm endangered
salmon and steelhead (HCN, 12/20/04: Fisheries agency rewards a
loyal bureaucrat). This July, the commerce department's inspector
general reported that James Lecky, then a NOAA Fisheries assistant
regional administrator, "circumvented key internal controls
established to ensure the integrity of the biological opinion."
Lecky was promoted to NOAA headquarters last October; NOAA
Fisheries says it will seek outside review of the science behind
the biological opinion.